Week 4

The weeks are flying by, this week we reached the half way point, I cant believe that we already been here for over a month. It is a strange feeling, because on the one hand it feels like yesterday when I was taking my finals back in Moscow and getting ready fore Rome; but on the other hand when I’m thinking back to the first days here in Rome and what I have seen, what I have sketched, what people I have meet and what I have done between then and now it feels like an eternity that I have been here. It is interesting how the perception of time can be so relative to the perspective you’re looking at it.
 After four weeks I can finally say that I start to understand the city. I can check off more and more sites of my to-do-list, but on the other hand that list is getting longer and longer with each day; so it almost seems like a race that I probably won’t win.This last week was a very important one for me. I had my first sketches that I am happy with. I noticed that I finally start developing my own style and carry that one style through all my sketches. Ofcourse there is still a lot to learn for me, and certainly not everything I draw looks amazing all of a sudden. But when I’m browsing through my sketchbook it’s first of all amazing how much we already sketched and then I can see how I became already a little bit better. This is a real motivation boost for me and makes me sketch even more. So although we did a lot of sketching this week I actually went out yesterday and today by myself to sketch for a little bit (and that in 95°F).
But the highlight of last week was definitely the second walking tour of Jeffery Blanchard, he gave us a tour about some of the Baroque churches around the Piazza Quirinale. The tour was manly about Borromini and Bernini; I say “mainly” because the topic was Borromini and Bernini Jeffery always put it into a larger context, so we covered way more then just these two artists. It was a great lecture/walking tour, Jeffery is definitely one of the most intelligent people I have ever met, he knew so much about everything, I was following him the whole 4 and a half hours of the walking tour trying to write down and remember as much as possible. (And that comes from a guy who usually falls asleep 15 min into the lecture).

It was another great week in Rome, I improved my sketching, I made some progress in studio, meet some new people and most importantly Germany advanced with 3 straight wins into the Quarters at the EuroCup so… I really cant complain…., allora arrivederci a la prossima settimana!

3rd Week - Field trip to Amalfi Coast

The highlight of this past week definitely was the first field trip to the Amalfi Coast; we first went to Paestum, then Atrani and Amalfi. In Paestum we saw some of the best-preserved ruins in the world, these greek temples were built more then 2000 years ago and they are still in really good conditions. If you see the temples you can easily imagine how they looked in they glory days. On the other hand it was also interesting to see how such an active place that once was so powerful was taken back by nature and then rediscovered at 1752 (roughly at the same time when also Pompeji and Herkulaneum). The ruins were everywhere and to see them in such good conditions was amazing, it was like walking through an ancient village.

Later that day we continued our trip to Atrani, where we stayed for the next 3 days. It is a 10 min walk from the more famous Amalfi. And the contrast between Amalfi and Atrani was like day and night. Amalfi was super touristy, you could barely move and you mainly heared people speaking anything but Italian. And just a 10 min walk away you are in Atrani and as I just said earlier it is a huge contrast between the two cities. Atrani is a little village and you feel like you are hundreds of miles away from any sort of tourism..., but actually it is within a stone’s throw...The village was built into the hillside so right behind the village there were some pretty challenging hikes. The runs up there actually were pretty hard and my calves were really sore afterwards... but it was worth the pain..., the view from Revello and the other overlook spot were both worth the pain. Here is a photo from our Monday rum with Amalfi in the background.

The Regata on Sunday was the highlight of the fieldtrip, it was a boat race between Amalfi, Pisa, Genova, and Venive; the most successful Maritime city-states back in the days. The race has been really close to the very end, but Amalfi ended up pulling off the win.

Later that night there was a big firework in Amalfi, it was the greatest firework show I have ever seen, it was a 20 min long show and here is the great finale of the show:

2nd week in Rome

The most fascinating part of the second week was definitely the walking tour through the forum romanum and the colosseum. In my 9 years of Latin we learned and translated a lot about the roman culture, the people and their wars; and now I am standing in the roman forum and walked through the colosseum. It was grotesque to think that we were walking through the streets and spaces where history was made all those years ago. It might appear that the Roman Forum is in ruins, but from history and Latin books I know the way it looked like, and even if just one or two columns are left of the building, it is enough to reconstruct the picture in my head. So that experience of retracing the steps of past Romans got a whole new dimension.

With that in mind it was very sad for me to see how thousands of tourists are channeled through those spaces. A place that once was the center of public life in Rome, used for triumphal processions and elections, venue for public speeches, criminal trials, gladiatorial matches, and now it is a tourist attraction. Back in the days it was the most celebrated meeting place in the world and today? Well today it is maybe not the most celebrated meeting place in the world, but it definitely is the most celebrated meeting place in history!

It is incredible how Romans were able to build structures that still stand these days; that makes me think, what do people look at in another 2000 years? Are they looking at our buildings that we build now? Or are the buildings and structures we build now long forgotten by then… Maybe it is a good thing that our built environment has changed; maybe it even had to change; I personally think it had to have changed, architecture always has to adapt to peoples lifestyle and our lifestyle clearly has changed toward the Roman time. But when I am seeing all these incredibly carefully designed buildings, structures or spaces I am wondering if we couldn’t incorporate more of that in to today’s architecture.

So that is something I want to get out of this summer, studying the history and trying to incorporate what I learned into my design. At the beginning of the week we went to the Piazza Fornese right across the Ponte Sisto, and I did this little axonometric: